Rickmers-Linie upgrades India-Europe service

Project and heavy-lift specialist Rickmers-Linie said it is adding four ships to its India-Europe service to take advantage of an expanding market.Rickmers said it will operate the Linde and the Martin, both built in 2005, under long-term charter. Each ship has capacity of 12,800 deadweight tons and has two 120-ton cranes that can be twinned to lift 240 tons. The Linde's first eastbound sailing was in March, Journal of Commerce reports. The Rickmers Yokohama and Rickmers Tianjin, will be delivered from Xinshun Shipyard Group in China in May and July. The 17,000-dwt ships each have two 150-ton cranes and an 80-ton crane and can lift up to 300 tons by combining the two larger cranes.


The India-Europe service operates eastbound and westbound and offers calls in Pakistan and the Middle East on inducement. The base ports served are Hamburg, Antwerp, Genoa, Mumbai and Chennai.


Rickmers said the ships will be smaller than the nine 30,000-dwt vessels operated on the line's round-the-world Pearl String service, which now will primarily serve the Middle East Gulf region. The carrier said the smaller ships have more flexibility to serve ports such as Mumbai, where locks restrict the size of vessels, and smaller ports.


"We are seeing increasing demand for breakbulk space on this route," said Gerhard Janssen, director of marketing and sales.


"Eastbound, we expect to be loading steel products as a base load, topping off with manufactured goods ranging from mobile cranes and mining products through to specialist railway and power generation equipment. Westbound, there are more and more non-containerizable shipments as India's engineering and manufacturing capabilities develop."


Janssen said the charter market for breakbulk vessels with heavy-lift gear has improved. "Only a year or two ago, all that was really available was old tonnage in need of retirement," he said. "Now there are a number of good modern ships available at reasonable rates. We still have four ships to be delivered after the Rickmers Yokohama and Rickmers Tianjin, and we are seeing a continued improvement of the market environment."
(Source:http://en.portnews.ru)